Definition of "madness" []

• The quality or condition of being insane. See Synonyms at insanity. (noun)
• Great folly: It was sheer madness to attempt the drive during a blizzard. (noun)
• Fury; rage. (noun)
• Enthusiasm; excitement. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "III. ii.439 (293,5) [to a living humour of madness] If this be the true reading we must by _living_ understand _lasting_, or _permanent_, but I cannot forbear to think that some antithesis was intended which is now lost; perhaps the passage stood thus, _I drove my suitor from a_ dying _humour of love to a living humour of madness_."
• "The whole thing - coupled with the normal end of the term madness - makes me want to jump in the car and drive until I hit a major metropolitan area that has luxurious hotels and fabulous restaurants."
• "He not only suffered a spectacular bout of what he called madness but also wrote an extraordinarily vivid account of it in his short novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, which he freely admitted was a thinly disguised account of what had happened to him on a 1954 voyage to Ceylon to restore his health."